Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, and Sweden - Comparing Environmental Policies in 16 Countries - page 79

has aspirations here as well. To entice them, the Greenland provincial
government plans to permit tourists to hunt polar bears. Native hunters
earn $1000 or more per skin, and expect that visitors would pay in the
range of $10,000.
Today, many believe that the center of Danish environmental activity
is no longer in Denmark, but in Brussels at the EU headquarters. For
instance, the Society for Nature Conservation lobbies there, and in turn
tries to keep the Danish public aware of what is happening in Brussels.
It cooperates with organizations from around Europe. Its main partner is
the European Environmental Bureau, a federation of 140 citizens groups.
The Danish Ecological Council, a research and educational group, is also
a member. Besides policy within their own country, Danish groups are
interested in environmental problems in the Third World. The govern-
ment has donated 1% of its budget to environmental aid overseas.
Denmark was the center of attention in 2009 when the Conference
of the Parties met in Copenhagen to consider how to repair the Kyoto
Protocol. For the prior year or so, it was obvious to all that the indus-
trial countries were not going to honor their agreement to reduce green-
house gases. Moreover, China, not a country with a reduction target but
growing industrially, was now the second-largest emitter after the United
States. Optimists hoped China and India would join the industrial coun-
tries to make new, firm commitments. They talked buoyantly about the
“Road to Copenhagen.” Many countries sent their presidents and prime
ministers instead of lower-ranking diplomats. But by the time the confer-
ence convened, pessimism reigned. Agreement was impossible, and the
distinguished world leaders left in embarrassment.
Sweden, like Germany, the Netherlands, and Denmark, has been
strongly pro-environmental. Its first major act of leadership was to spon-
sor the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment,
the first Earth Summit. Most of Sweden's population of 11 million live
in the south. The northern part of the country is cold and mountainous.
Two-thirds of the total land mass is forested, and only a tenth is arable.
Although humans have lived in the region since the end of the Ice Age,
their numbers were small and their impact was slight. Much of the land
was not settled intensively until the second half of the 19th century,
when the so-called “timber frontier” moved across the pine-dominated